1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to musical instruments having bowed or plucked strings such as acoustic guitars or electric guitars and more particularly electric bass guitars.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Since the appearance of the first acoustic electric guitars which were no more than conventional acoustic guitars provided with a device for picking up and amplifying the sounds produced by the instrument, considerable progress has been made in this field with solid body guitars and then half-solid thin-body guitars being created.
The solid body guitars or "solid box" guitars comprise a body made of solid wood and a solid neck.
Some, known as "stick" guitars, comprise the neck only. Not having a sound box, such guitars have no acoustic quality, and the sounds they produce are practically pure, not including the harmonic richness that gives rise to the timbre specific to each instrument.
The search for better acoustic quality then led to half-solid thin body guitars being created, also referred to as "semi hollow-body" guitars, and like conventional guitars they also possess a sound box. It is small in size to avoid the severe problems created by the howl-around that used to exist with the first electro-acoustic guitars, while allowing performance over a wider range than solid box guitars.
However, it turns out that the additional harmonic characteristics provided by said half-box structure are not suitable for certain instruments, and in particular for an electric bass guitar where the looked-for sounds are close to those of the double bass.
Patent document EP-A-0 056 537 proposes improving the harmonic content of stringed instruments having a rigid body by fitting them with a sound board that bends under pressure from a tailpiece which is subjected to the tension in the strings and thus exerts longitudinal thrust on the board.
However, the thrust exerted by the tailpiece on the sound board causes it to buckle, thereby considerably limiting the intensity of the vibrations that it can produce.
In addition, the structure used in stringed instruments of the bowed type has an external appearance reminescent of traditional acoustic instruments, with the narrow F-holes of a conventional instrument nevertheless being replaced by a huge opening, which is a completely unacceptable handicap for electrical instruments.